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 At a 1997 performance, I was featured and read an portion of chapter three of The Key To Believing. People talked to me about my work after the reading, but one person asked if I was Sloane Emerson. As a designer and a publisher, I thought at the time I would be more like Carter Donovan, in disliking corporate America and excelling in publishing. I could guess that the idea of Sloane having nightmares about losing control is like me, and the fact that she likes to sleep on the left side of the bed is another similarity. But I believe the main character would be fiction, but someone I would truly admire in the real world. There are so few people who are strong and consistent in their beliefs, and I wonder why why people do not always live this way.
What I read was a part of the book that talked more about Carter than Sloane, but the bouncer standing at the doorway as I was leaving said to me, “I’m in love with Sloane Emerson!” We talked about my book, and I was thrilled that he said he loved her. I didn’t portray Sloane as a quote-unquote “feminine” woman -- Sloane is a woman who is obsessed with her work, who doesn’t care about the clothes she wear and doesn’t wear make-up. She’s not the feminine blonde stereotype. And this bouncer -- a man possibly stereotyped as a brainless brawn who looks for petite blondes who think little -- this bouncer said he was in love with Sloane. He may not have known why he liked that character. He may not have decided what it was about Sloane that he liked, that she was strong, that she cared so intensely about her work, or that she claimed ownership of what was rightfully hers. But these traits might actually be attractive, in a man or a woman.
My husband noticed that the first part of this novel was written before I was in an extremely serious car accident. After recovering from the accident, I told him the main character would go through a transformation of sorts, that she would decide to use any means -- legal or not, even testing her physical strength and her mental powers -- to achieve her goal. My husband said it was interesting that there will be a change in the main character’s personality, and he wondered if it coincided with the change in my life.
The main character had to change dramatically in order to do things she would never think she could normally do. I know as I started to write this that I felt that I was more like Carter, but as the book has progressed, I feel like my personality has moved to Sloane, because when I want something I will do anything to achieve a goal. In the past I have never thought I would not get work done, I just did. With Sloane, her work because a personal matter, and it became something she had to fight for with all her life. And it wa something she would easily do, because she couldn’t change her morals or values to let these things slip away from her.
I asked a friend of mine what he thought of the idea of a book about AIDS and the government conspiracy. He asked me if I believed in a conspiracy. I don’t. “That’s why it’s called a novel,” I answered. Then he told me that he would be concerned that some people might read this book and see the government conspiracy theories and think that, for example, AZT is what actually gives people AIDS, and that even if their immune system is suffering they should not get on medications -- that these drugs have been released on the market precisely because the government wants them there to seal the coffin shut for AIDS victims.
From Chapter six:
“But it disturbed her, primarily because there might be patients out there who decide to reject drug usage for their treatment for AIDS because of what they think the government is doing to them, because they think all of the drugs will do them more harm than good. Sloane didn’t want people to decide to not take drugs that might save their lives because they blindly believed what one web page told them.
“Sloane kept reminding herself that false conspiracy theories actually make people less interested in practicing safe behavior or getting tested. ... People most at risk may use conspiracy theories as a part of their denial. And most conspiracy theories, as she could tell, were scientifically unsound, or homophobic/racist in origin.”
The conspiracy theories that Sloane researched were from actual theories existing on the Internet -- I didn’t make up the conspiray theories that she read through in the book. But I do, want to make clear that I created the conspiracy about the U.S. government in this story, and that this book is fiction.
I decided to work on the idea of a conspiracy because it would provide a conflict that the protagonist would be able to battle. The main characters in this book love their work with an intensity that rivals no other, and the constant motion toward their goal keeps them not only alive but also truly living. For Carter, his battles rested with the incompetent people he has to work with at Quentin Publishing. For Sloane, the battle with getting Food and Drug Administration approval and abiding by the ever-increasing number of restrictions the government imposed on her profession is what she had to face. The conspiracy is the way her battles become an extreme, so that she could fight them to make her world sane again.
The goal in science is to use logic and reason to not only make sense of the world but also master it and make it better, but many people do not use logic and reason when they live their day-to-day lives. If only people used logic and reason in the rest of their lives; think of how much better the world would be. If someone decides to dedicate their life to work in the field of science, they make a decision to embrace the standards that so few do -- to look at the world realistically and logically, for one.
AIDS has been in the spotlight, and I want to give this virus exposure it deserves to help people gain knowledge about it. There is still so much to learn about the HIV virus that people don’t know. This book was a good opportunity for me to learn about it and pass the knowledge on to others.
I previously read that in writing a novel it is good to derive stories from real life experiences when explaining how people act. Overexaggerating characteristics will make the story sound less believable, but realism can sound frightening when actually told in a story like this one. I decided that conflicts that would happen between Sloane and Shelly, for instance, could be generated from furious memos I had kept in the past with working in intolerable situations with ignorant people. The essays Sloane wrote in Chapter eleven were edited from past essays and journals of mine, letters and conflicts that she had in the workplace stemmed from past letters and memos in past situations of my own. Real life can often paint a vulgar picture; it made more sense to derive the some of the facts in The Key To Believing from the harsh truths in real life.
Fiction only becomes more believable when some of it is based on truth.
Sometimes “the middle” that we see everywhere in the real world can be more horrific than people imagine; it becomes tolerant of change and growth, and that “middle” translates to being inconsistent and illogical. The main characters of this novel are true and faithful to their beliefs. They are true to themselves, and the strength of these characters allows great things to happen for them.
Some characters in The Key To Believing are flighty, some change their mind at what appears to be whim, and some lie and stab people in the back. This behavior has become the middle of the road, and this is what people do in real life almost regularly. People don’t think about the choices they make with their lives, and they act differently at work versus socially because they seem to think that their philosophy doesn’t extends to all parts of their life. This is what people don’t realize, and this may be why so many people now seem to be content with not achieving more with their lives.
These characters are consistent with their beliefs, and it allows them a strength and a power that most do not see. It is possible to have that power, but you have to have the strength to know how to make these things happen.
Janet Kuypers
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